I
In order to portray this crisis in the life of Kate Marcy, the outcome
of which is still uncertain, other matters have been ignored.
How many persons besides John Hodder have seemed to read--in crucial
periods--a meaning into incidents having all the outward appearance
of accidents! What is it that leads us to a certain man or woman at a
certain time, or to open a certain book? Order and design? or influence?
The night when he had stumbled into the cafe in Dalton Street might well
have been termed the nadir of Hodder's experience. His faith had been
blotted out, and, with it had suddenly been extinguished all spiritual
sense, The beast had taken possession. And then, when it was least
expected,--nay, when despaired of, had come the glimmer of a
light; distant, yet clear. He might have traced the course of his
disillusionment, perhaps, but cause and effect were not discernible
here.
They soon became so, and in the weeks that followed he grew to have the
odd sense of a guiding hand on his shoulder,--such was his instinctive
interpretation of it, rather than the materialistic one of things
ordained. He might turn, in obedience to what seemed a whim, either to
the right or left, only to recognize new blazes that led him on with
surer step; and trivial accidents became events charged with meaning. He
lived in continual wonder.
One broiling morning, for instance, he gathered up the last of the books
whose contents he had a month before so feverishly absorbed, and which
had purged him of all fallacies. At first he had welcomed them with a
fierce relief, sucked them dry, then looked upon them with loathing. Now
he pressed them gratefully, almost tenderly, as he made his way along
the shady side of the street towards the great library set in its little
park.
He was reminded, as he passed from the blinding sunlight into the cool
entrance hall, with its polished marble stairway and its statuary, that
Eldon Parr's munificence had made the building possible: that some day
Mr. Parr's bust would stand in that vestibule with that of Judge Henry
Goodrich--Philip Goodrich's grandfather--and of other men who had served
their city and their commonwealth.
Upstairs, at the desk, he was handing in the volumes to the young woman
whose duty it was to receive them when he was hailed by a brisk little
man in an alpaca coat, with a skin like brown parchment.
“Why, Mr. Hodder,” he exclaimed cheerfully, with a trace of German
accent, “I had an idea you were somewhere on the cool seas with our
friend, Mr. Parr. He spoke, before he left, of inviting you.”
It had been Eldon Parr, indeed, who had first brought Hodder to
the library, shortly after the rector's advent, and Mr. Engel had
accompanied them on a tour of inspection; the financier himself had
enjoined the librarian to “take good care” of the clergyman. Mr. Waring,
Mr. Atterbury; and Mr. Constable were likewise trustees. And since then,
when talking to him, Hodder had had a feeling that Mr. Engel was not
unconscious of the aura--if it may be called such--of his vestry.
Mr. Engel picked up one of the books as it lay on the counter, and as he
read the title his face betrayed a slight surprise.
“Modern criticism!” he exclaimed.
“You have found me out,” the rector acknowledged, smiling.
“Came into my room, and have a chat,” said the librarian, coaxingly.
It was a large chamber at the corner of the building, shaded by awnings,
against which brushed the branches of an elm which had belonged to the
original park. In the centre of the room was a massive oak desk, one
whole side of which was piled high with new volumes.
“Look there,” said the librarian, with a quick wave of his hand, “those
are some which came in this week, and I had them put here to look
over. Two-thirds of 'em on religion, or religious philosophy. Does that
suggest anything to you clergymen?”
“Do many persons read them, Mr. Engel?” said the rector, at length.
“Read them!” cried Mr. Engel, quizzically. “We librarians are a sort of
weather-vanes, if people only knew enough to consult us. We can hardly
get a sufficient number of these new religious books the good ones, I
mean--to supply the demand. And the Lord knows what trash is devoured,
from what the booksellers tell me. It reminds me of the days when this
library was down on Fifth Street, years ago, and we couldn't supply
enough Darwins and Huxleys and Spencers and popular science generally.
That was an agnostic age. But now you'd be surprised to see the
different kinds of men and women who come demanding books on
religion--all sorts and conditions. They're beginning to miss it out of
their lives; they want to know. If my opinion's worth anything, I
should not hesitate to declare that we're on the threshold of a greater
religious era than the world has ever seen.”
Hodder thrust a book back into the pile, and turned abruptly, with a
manner that surprised the librarian. No other clergyman to whom he had
spoken on this subject had given evidence of this strong feeling,
and the rector of St. John's was the last man from whom he would have
expected it.
“Do you really think so?” Hodder demanded.
“Why, yes,” said Mr. Engel, when he had recovered from his astonishment.
“I'm sure of it. I think clergymen especially--if you will pardon
me--are apt to forget that this is a reading age. That a great many
people who used to get what instruction they had--ahem--from churches,
for instance, now get it from books. I don't want to say anything to
offend you, Mr. Hodder--”
“You couldn't,” interrupted the rector. He was equally surprised at the
discovery that he had misjudged Mr. Engel, and was drawn towards him now
with a strong sympathy and curiosity.
“Well,” replied Mr. Engel, “I'm glad to hear you say that.” He
restrained a gasp. Was this the orthodox Mr. Hodder of St. John's?
“Why,” said Hodder, sitting down, “I've learned, as you have, by
experience. Only my experience hasn't been so hopeful as yours--that is,
if you regard yours as hopeful. It would be hypocritical of me not to
acknowledge that the churches are losing ground, and that those who
ought to be connected with them are not. I am ready to admit that the
churches are at fault. But what you tell me of people reading these
books gives me more courage than I have had for--for some time.”
“Is it so!” ejaculated the little man, relapsing into the German idiom
of his youth.
“It is,” answered the rector, with an emphasis not to be denied. “I wish
you would give me your theory about this phenomenon, and speak frankly.”
“But I thought--” the bewildered librarian began. “I saw you had been
reading those books, but I thought--”
“Naturally you did,” said Holder, smiling. His personality, his
ascendency, his poise, suddenly felt by the other, were still more
confusing. “You thought me a narrow, complacent, fashionable priest who
had no concern as to what happened outside the walls of his church, who
stuck obstinately to dogmas and would give nothing else a hearing. Well,
you were right.”
“Ah, I didn't think all that,” Mr. Engel protested, and his parchment
skin actually performed the miracle of flushing. “I am not so stupid.
And once, long ago when I was young, I was going to be a minister
myself.”
“What prevented you?” asked Holder, interested.
“You want me to be frank--yes, well, I couldn't take the vows.” The
brown eyes of the quiet, humorous, self-contained and dried-up custodian
of the city's reading flamed up. “I felt the call,” he exclaimed. “You
may not credit it to look at me now, Mr. Hodder. They said to me, 'here
is what you must swear to believe before you can make men and women
happier and more hopeful, rescue them from sin and misery!' You know
what it was.”
Hodder nodded.
“It was a crime. It had nothing to do with religion. I thought it over
for a year--I couldn't. Oh, I have since been thankful. I can see now
what would have happened to me--I should have had fatty degeneration of
the soul.”
The expression was not merely forcible, it was overwhelming. It brought
up before Holder's mind, with sickening reality, the fate he had himself
escaped. Fatty degeneration of the soul!
The little man, seeing the expression on the rector's face, curbed his
excitement, and feared he had gone too far.
“You will pardon me!” he said penitently, “I forget myself. I did not
mean all clergymen.”
“I have never heard it put so well,” Holder declared. “That is exactly
what occurs in many cases.”
“Yes, it is that,” said Engel, still puzzled, but encouraged, eyeing the
strong face of the other. “And they lament that the ministry hasn't
more big men. Sometimes they get one with the doctrinal type of mind--a
Newman--but how often? And even a Newman would be of little avail
to-day. It is Eucken who says that the individual, once released from
external authority, can never be turned back to it. And they have been
released by the hundreds of thousands ever since Luther's time, are
being freed by the hundreds of thousands to-day. Democracy, learning,
science, are releasing them, and no man, no matter how great he may be,
can stem that tide. The able men in the churches now--like your Phillips
Brooks, who died too soon--are beginning to see this. They are those who
developed after the vows of the theological schools were behind them.
Remove those vows, and you will see the young men come. Young men are
idealists, Mr. Hodder, and they embrace other professions where the mind
is free, and which are not one whit better paid than the ministry.
“And what is the result,” he cried, “of the senseless insistence on the
letter instead of the spirit of the poetry of religion? Matthew Arnold
was a thousand times right when he inferred that Jesus Christ never
spoke literally and yet he is still being taken literally by most
churches, and all the literal sayings which were put into his mouth
are maintained as Gospel truth! What is the result of proclaiming
Christianity in terms of an ancient science and theology which awaken
no quickening response in the minds and hearts of to-day? That!” The
librarian thrust a yellow hand towards the pile of books. “The new wine
has burst the old skin and is running all over the world. Ah, my friend,
if you could only see, as I do, the yearning for a satisfying religion
which exists in this big city! It is like a vacuum, and those books
are rushing to supply it. I little thought,” he added dreamily, “when
I renounced the ministry in so much sorrow that one day I should have
a church of my own. This library is my church, and men and women of all
creeds come here by the thousands. But you must pardon me. I have been
carried away--I forgot myself.”
“Mr. Engel,” replied the rector, “I want you to regard me as one of your
parishioners.”
The librarian looked at him mutely, and the practical, desiccated little
person seemed startlingly transformed into a mediaeval, German mystic.
“You are a great man, Mr. Hodder,” he said. “I might have guessed it.”
It was one of the moments when protest would have been trite,
superfluous. And Hodder, in truth, felt something great swelling within
him, something that was not himself, and yet strangely was. But just
what--in view of his past strict orthodoxy and limited congregation--Mr.
Engel meant, he could not have said. Had the librarian recognized,
without confession on his part, the change in him? divined his future
intentions?
“It is curious that I should have met you this morning, Mr. Engel,” he
said. “I expressed surprise when you declared this was a religious age,
because you corroborated something I had felt, but of which I had no
sufficient proof. I felt that a great body of unsatisfied men and women
existed, but that I was powerless to get in touch with them; I had
discovered that truth, as you have so ably pointed out, is disguised and
distorted by ancient dogmas; and that the old Authority, as you say, no
longer carries weight.”
“Have you found the new one?” Mr. Engel demanded.
“I think I have,” the rector answered calmly, “it lies in personality. I
do not know whether you will agree with me that the Church at large has
a future, and I will confess to you that there was a time when I thought
she had not. I see now that she has, once given to her ministers that
freedom to develop of which you speak. In spite of the fact that truth
has gradually been revealed to the world by what may be called an
Apostolic Succession of Personalities,--Augustine, Dante, Francis of
Assisi, Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, and our own Lincoln and Phillips
Brooks,--to mention only a few,--the Church as a whole has been blind to
it. She has insisted upon putting the individual in a straitjacket, she
has never recognized that growth is the secret of life, that the clothes
of one man are binding on another.”
“Ah, you are right--a thousand times right,” cried the librarian.
“You have read Royce, perhaps, when he says, 'This mortal shall put on
individuality--'”
“No,” said the rector, outwardly cool, but inwardly excited by the
coruscation of this magnificent paraphrase of Paul's sentence, by the
extraordinary turn the conversation had taken. “I am ashamed to own that
I have not followed the development of modern philosophy. The books
I have just returned, on historical criticism,” he went on, after a
moment's hesitation, “infer what my attitude has been toward modern
thought. We were made acquainted with historical criticism in the
theological seminary, but we were also taught to discount it. I have
discounted it, refrained from reading it,--until now. And yet I have
heard it discussed in conferences, glanced over articles in the reviews.
I had, you see, closed the door of my mind. I was in a state where
arguments make no impression.”
The librarian made a gesture of sympathetic assent, which was also a
tribute to the clergyman's frankness.
“You will perhaps wonder how I could have lived these years in an
atmosphere of modern thought and have remained uninfluenced. Well, I
have recently been wondering--myself.” Hodder smiled. “The name of Royce
is by no means unfamiliar to me, and he taught at Harvard when I was
an undergraduate. But the prevailing philosophy of that day among the
students was naturalism. I represent a revolt from it. At the seminary I
imbibed a certain amount of religious philosophy--but I did not continue
it, as thousands of my more liberal fellow-clergymen have done. My
religion 'worked' during the time, at least, I remained in my first
parish. I had no interest in reconciling, for instance, the doctrine of
evolution with the argument for design. Since I have been here in this
city,” he added, simply, “my days have been filled with a continued
perplexity--when I was not too busy to think. Yes, there was an
unacknowledged element of fear in my attitude, though I comforted myself
with the notion that opinions, philosophical and scientific, were in a
state of flux.”
“Yes, yes,” said Mr. Engel, “I comprehend. But, from the manner in which
you spoke just now, I should have inferred that you have been reading
modern philosophy--that of the last twenty years. Ah, you have
something before you, Mr. Hodder. You will thank God, with me, for that
philosophy. It has turned the tide, set the current running the other
way. Philosophy is no longer against religion, it is with it. And if
you were to ask me to name one of the greatest religious teachers of
our age, I should answer, William James. And there is Royce, of whom I
spoke,--one of our biggest men. The dominant philosophies of our times
have grown up since Arnold wrote his 'Literature and Dogma,' and they
are in harmony with the quickening social spirit of the age, which is a
religious spirit--a Christian spirit, I call it. Christianity is coming
to its own. These philosophies, which are not so far apart, are the
flower of the thought of the centuries, of modern science, of that most
extraordinary of discoveries, modern psychology. And they are far from
excluding religion, from denying the essential of Christ's teachings.
On the other hand, they grant that the motive-power of the world is
spiritual.
“And this,” continued Mr. Engel, “brings me to another aspect of
authority. I wonder if it has struck you? In mediaeval times, when a
bishop spoke ex cathedra, his authority, so far as it carried weight,
came from two sources. First, the supposed divine charter of the Church
to save and damn. That authority is being rapidly swept away. Second, he
spoke with all the weight of the then accepted science and philosophy.
But as soon as the new science began to lay hold on people's minds,
as--for instance--when Galileo discovered that the earth moved instead
of the sun (and the pope made him take it back), that second authority
began to crumble too. In the nineteenth century science had grown so
strong that the situation looked hopeless. Religion had apparently
irrevocably lost that warrant also, and thinking men not spiritually
inclined, since they had to make a choice between science and religion,
took science as being the more honest, the more certain.
“And now what has happened? The new philosophies have restored your
second Authority, and your first, as you properly say, is replaced
by the conception of Personality. Personality is nothing but the
rehabilitation of the prophet, the seer. Get him, as Hatch says, back
into your Church. The priests with their sacrifices and automatic rites,
the logicians, have crowded him out. Why do we read the Old Testament at
all? Not for the laws of the Levites, not for the battles and hangings,
but for the inspiration of the prophets. The authority of the prophet
comes through personality, the source of which is in what Myers calls
the infinite spiritual world--in God. It was Christ's own authority.
“And as for your other authority, your ordinary man, when he reads
modern philosophy, says to himself, this does not conflict with science?
But he gets no hint, when he goes to most churches, that there is,
between the two, no real quarrel, and he turns away in despair. He may
accept the pragmatism of James, the idealism of Royce, or even what is
called neo realism. In any case, he gains the conviction that a force
for good is at worn in the world, and he has the incentive to become
part of it..... But I have given you a sermon!”
“For which I can never be sufficiently, grateful,” said Hodder, with an
earnestness not to be mistaken.
The little man's eyes rested admiringly, and not without emotion, on the
salient features of the tall clergyman. And when he spoke again, it was
in acknowledgment of the fact that he had read Hodder's purpose.
“You will have opposition, my friend. They will fight you--some persons
we know. They do not wish--what you and I desire. But you will not
surrender--I knew it.” Mr. Engel broke off abruptly, and rang a bell on
his desk. “I will make out for you a list. I hope you may come in again,
often. We shall have other talks,--yes? I am always here.”
Then it came to pass that Hodder carried back with him another armful of
books. Those he had brought back were the Levellers of the False. These
were the Builders of the True.
II
Hodder had known for many years that the writings of Josiah Royce and of
William James had “been in the air,” so to speak, and he had heard them
mentioned at dinner parties by his more intellectual parishioners, such
as Mrs. Constable and Martha Preston. Now he was able to smile at his
former attitude toward these moderns, whose perusal he had deprecated as
treason to the saints! And he remembered his horror on having listened
to a fellow-clergyman discuss with calmness the plan of the “Varieties
of Religious Experiences.” A sacrilegious dissection of the lives
of these very saints! The scientific process, the theories of modern
psychology applied with sang-froid to the workings of God in the human
soul! Science he had regarded as the proclaimed enemy of religion, and
in these days of the apotheosis of science not even sacred things were
spared.
Now Hodder saw what the little librarian had meant by an authority
restored. The impartial method of modern science had become so firmly
established in the mind of mankind by education and reading that the
ancient unscientific science of the Roman Empire, in which orthodox
Christianity was clothed, no longer carried authority. In so far as
modern science had discovered truth, religion had no quarrel with it.
And if theology pretended to be the science of religion, surely it
must submit to the test of the new science! The dogged clinging to the
archaic speculations of apologists, saints, and schoolmen had brought
religion to a low ebb indeed.
One of the most inspiring books he read was by an English clergyman of
his own Church whom he had formerly looked upon as a heretic, with all
that the word had once implied. It was a frank yet reverent study of the
self-consciousness of Christ, submitting the life and teachings of
Jesus to modern criticism and the scientific method. And the Saviour's
divinity, rather than being lessened, was augmented. Hodder found it
infinitely refreshing that the so-called articles of Christian belief,
instead of being put first and their acceptance insisted upon, were made
the climax of the investigation.
Religion, he began to perceive, was an undertaking, are attempt to
find unity and harmony of the soul by adopting, after mature thought,
a definite principle in life. If harmony resulted,--if the principle
worked, it was true. Hodder kept an open mind, but he became a
pragmatist so far. Science, on the other hand, was in a sphere by
herself, and need have no conflict with religion; science was not an
undertaking, but an impartial investigation by close observation of
facts in nature. Her object was to discover truths by these methods
alone. She had her theories, indeed, but they must be submitted to
rigorous tests. This from a book by Professor Perry, an advocate of the
new realism.
On the other hand there were signs that modern science, by infinitesimal
degrees, might be aiding in the solution of the Mystery....
But religion, Hodder saw, was trusting. Not credulous, silly trusting,
but thoughtful trusting, accepting such facts as were definitely known.
Faith was trusting. And faith without works was dead simply because
there could be no faith without works. There was no such thing as belief
that did not result in act.
A paragraph which made a profound impression on Hodder at that time
occurs in James's essay, “Is life worth living?”
“Now-what do I mean by I trusting? Is the word to carry with it
license to define in detail an invisible world, and to authorize and
excommunicate those whose trust is different?... Our faculties of belief
were not given us to make orthodoxies and heresies withal; they were
given us to live by. And to trust our religions demands men first of all
to live in the light of them, and to act as if the invisible world which
they suggest were real. It is a fact of human nature that man can live
and die by the help of a sort of faith that goes without a single dogma
and definition.”
Yet it was not these religious philosophies which had saved him, though
the stimulus of their current had started his mind revolving like a
motor. Their function, he perceived now, was precisely to compel him
to see what had saved him, to reenforce it with the intellect, with
the reason, and enable him to save others. The current set up,--by a
thousand suggestions of which he made notes,--a personal construction,
coordination, and he had the exhilaration of feeling, within him, a
creative process all his own. Behold a mystery 'a paradox'--one of many.
As his strength grew greater day by day, as his vision grew clearer, he
must exclaim with Paul: “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with
me!”
He, Hodder, was but an instrument transmitting power. And yet--oh
paradox!--the instrument continued to improve, to grow stronger, to
develop individuality and personality day by day! Life, present and
hereafter, was growth, development, the opportunity for service in a
cause. To cease growing was to die.
He perceived at last the form all religion takes is that of consecration
to a Cause,--one of God's many causes. The meaning of life is to find
one's Cause, to lose one's self in it. His was the liberation of the
Word,--now vouchsafed to him; the freeing of the spark from under the
ashes. The phrase was Alison's. To help liberate the Church, fan into
flame the fire which was to consume the injustice, the tyranny, the
selfishness of the world, until the Garvins, the Kate Marcys, the
stunted children, and anaemic women were no longer possible.
It was Royce who, in one illuminating sentence, solved for him the
puzzle, pointed out whence his salvation had come. “For your cause can
only be revealed to you through some presence that first teaches you
to love the unity of the spiritual life... You must find it in human
shape.”
Horace Bentley!
He, Hodder, had known this, but known it vaguely, without sanction. The
light had shone for him even in the darkness of that night in Dalton
Street, when he thought to have lost it forever. And he had awakened
the next morning, safe,--safe yet bewildered, like a half drowned man on
warm sands in the sun.
“The will of the spiritual world, the divine will, revealed in man.”
What sublime thoughts, as old as the Cross itself, yet continually and
eternally new!
III
There was still another whose face was constantly before him, and the
reflection of her distressed yet undaunted soul,--Alison Parr. The
contemplation of her courage, of her determination to abide by nothing
save the truth, had had a power over him that he might not estimate, and
he loved her as a man loves a woman, for her imperfections. And he loved
her body and her mind.
One morning, as he walked back from Mrs. Bledsoe's through an
unfrequented, wooded path of the Park, he beheld her as he had summoned
her in his visions. She was sitting motionless, gazing before her with
clear eyes, as at the Fates...
She started on suddenly perceiving him, but it was characteristic of her
greeting that she seemed to feel no surprise at the accident which had
brought them together.
“I am afraid,” he said, smiling, “that I have broken in on some profound
reflections.”
She did not answer at once, but looked up at him, as he stood over her,
with one of her strange, baffling gazes, in which there was the hint of
a welcoming smile.
“Reflection seems to be a circular process with me,” she answered. “I
never get anywhere--like you.”
“Like me!” he exclaimed, seating himself on the bench. Apparently their
intercourse, so long as it should continue, was destined to be on the
basis of intimacy in which it had begun. It was possible at once to be
aware of her disturbing presence, and yet to feel at home in it.
“Like you, yes,” she said, continuing to examine him. “You've changed
remarkably.”
In his agitation, at this discovery of hers he again repeated her words.
“Why, you seem happier, you look happier. It isn't only that, I can't
explain how you impress me. It struck me when you were talking to Mr.
Bentley the other day. You seem to see something you didn't see when
I first met you, that you didn't see the first time we were at Mr.
Bentley's together. Your attitude is fixed--directed. You have made a
decision of some sort--a momentous one, I rather think.”
“Yes,” he replied, “you are right. It's more than remarkable that you
should have guessed it.”
She remained silent
“I have decided,” he found himself saying abruptly, “to continue in the
Church.”
Still she was silent, until he wondered whether she would answer him. He
had often speculated to himself how she would take this decision, but
he could make no surmise from her expression as she stared off into the
wood. Presently she turned her head, slowly, and looked into his face.
Still she did not speak.
“You are wondering how I can do it,” he said.
“Yes,” she acknowledged, in a low voice.
“I should like you to know--that is why I spoke of it. You have never
asked me, and I have never told you that the convictions I formerly
held I lost. And with them, for a while, went everything. At least so I
believed.”
“I knew it,” she answered, “I could see that, too.”
“When I argued with you, that afternoon,--the last time we talked
together alone,--I was trying to convince myself, and you--” he
hesitated, “--that there was something. The fact that you could not seem
to feel it stimulated me.”
He read in her eyes that she understood him. And he dared not, nor did
he need to emphasize further his own intense desire that she should find
a solution of her own.
“I wish you to know what I am telling you for two reasons,” he went on.
“It was you who spoke the words that led to the opening of my eyes
to the situation into which I had been drifting for two years, who
compelled me to look upon the inconsistencies and falsities which had
gradually been borne in upon me. It was you, I think, who gave me the
courage to face this situation squarely, since you possess that kind of
courage yourself.”
“Oh, no,” she cried. “You would have done it anyway.”
He paused a moment, to get himself in hand.
“For this reason, I owed it to you to speak--to thank you. I have
realized, since that first meeting, that you became my friend then, and
that you spoke as a friend. If you had not believed in my sincerity,
you would not have spoken. I wish you to know that I am fully aware and
grateful for the honour you did me, and that I realize it is not always
easy for you to speak so--to any one.”
She did not reply.
“There is another reason for my telling you now of this decision of
mine to remain a clergyman,” he continued. “It is because I value your
respect and friendship, and I hope you will believe that I would not
take this course unless I saw my way clear to do it with sincerity.”
“One has only to look at you to see that you are sincere,” she said
gently, with a thrill in her voice that almost unmanned him. “I told
you once that I should never have forgiven myself if I had wrecked your
life. I meant it. I am very glad.”
It was his turn to be silent.
“Just because I cannot see how it would be possible to remain in the
Church after one had been--emancipated, so to speak,”--she smiled at
him,--“is no reason why you may not have solved the problem.”
Such was the superfine quality of her honesty. Yet she trusted him! He
was made giddy by a desire, which he fought down, to justify himself
before her. His eye beheld her now as the goddess with the scales in
her hand, weighing and accepting with outward calm the verdict of the
balance .... Outward calm, but inner fire.
“It makes no difference,” she pursued evenly, bent on choosing her
words, “that I cannot personally understand your emancipation, that mine
is different. I can only see the preponderance of evil, of deception,
of injustice--it is that which shuts out everything else. And it's
temperamental, I suppose. By looking at you, as I told you, I can see
that your emancipation is positive, while mine remains negative. You
have somehow regained a conviction that the good is predominant, that
there is some purpose in the universe.”
He assented. Once more she relapsed into thought, while he sat
contemplating her profile. She turned to him again with a tremulous
smile.
“But isn't a conviction that the good is predominant, that there is a
purpose in the universe, a long way from the positive assertions in
the Creeds?” she asked. “I remember, when I went through what you would
probably call disintegration, and which seemed to me enlightenment, that
the Creeds were my first stumbling-blocks. It seemed wrong to repeat
them.”
“I am glad you spoke of this,” he replied gravely. “I have arrived at
many answers to that difficulty--which did not give me the trouble I had
anticipated. In the first place, I am convinced that it was much more of
a difficulty ten, twenty, thirty years ago than it is to-day. That which
I formerly thought was a radical tendency towards atrophy, the drift of
the liberal party in my own Church and others, as well as that which
I looked upon with some abhorrence as the free-thinking speculation
of many modern writers, I have now come to see is reconstruction.
The results of this teaching of religion in modern terms are already
becoming apparent, and some persons are already beginning to see that
the Creeds express certain elemental truths in frankly archaic
language. All this should be explained in the churches and the Sunday
schools,--is, in fact, being explained in some, and also in books for
popular reading by clergymen of my own Church, both here and in England.
We have got past the critical age.”
She followed him closely, but did not interrupt.
“I do not mean to say that the Creeds are not the sources of much
misunderstanding, but in my opinion they do not constitute a sufficient
excuse for any clergyman to abandon his Church on account of them.
Indeed there are many who interpret them by modern thought--which is
closer to the teachings of Christ than ancient thought--whose honesty
cannot be questioned. Personally, I think that the Creeds either ought
to be taken out of the service; or changed, or else there should be
a note inserted in the service and catechism definitely permitting
a liberal interpretation which is exactly what so many clergymen,
candidly, do now.
“When I was ordained a deacon, and then a priest, I took vows which
would appear to be literally conflicting. Compelled to choose between
these vows, I accept that as supreme which I made when I affirmed that
I would teach nothing which I should be persuaded might not be concluded
and affirmed by the Scripture. The Creeds were derived from the
Scripture--not the Scripture from the Creeds. As an individual among a
body of Christians I am powerless to change either the ordinal vows or
the Creeds, I am obliged to wait for the consensus of opinion. But if,
on the whole, I can satisfy my conscience in repeating the Creeds and
reading the service, as other honest men are doing--if I am convinced
that I have an obvious work to do in that Church, it would be cowardly
for me to abandon that work.”
Her eyes lighted up.
“I see what you mean,” she said, “by staying in you can do many things
that you could not do, you can help to bring about the change, by being
frank. That is your point of view. You believe in the future of the
Church.”
“I believe in an universal, Christian organization,” he replied.
“But while stronger men are honest,” she objected, “are not your ancient
vows and ancient Creeds continually making weaker men casuists?”
“Undoubtedly,” he agreed vigorously, and thought involuntarily of Mr.
Engel's phrased fatty degeneration of the soul. “Yet I can see the
signs, on all sides, of a gradual emancipation, of which I might be
deemed an example.” A smile came into his eyes, like the sun on a
grey-green sea.
“Oh, you could never be a casuist!” she exclaimed, with a touch of
vehemence. “You are much too positive. It is just that note, which is
characteristic of so many clergymen, that note of smoothing-over and
apology, which you lack. I could never feel it, even when you were
orthodox. And now--” words failed her as she inspected his ruggedness.
“And now,” he took her up, to cover his emotion, “now I am not to be
classified!”
Still examining him, she reflected on this.
“Classified? Isn't it because you're so much of an individual that one
fails to classify you? You represent something new to my experience,
something which seems almost a contradiction--an emancipated Church.”
“You imagined me out of the Church,--but where?” he demanded.
“That's just it,” she wondered intimately, “where? When I try, I can see
no other place for you. Your place as in the pulpit.”
He uttered a sharp exclamation, which she did not heed.
“I can't imagine you doing institutional work, as it is called,--you're
not fitted for it, you'd be wasted in it. You gain by the historic
setting of the Church, and yet it does not absorb you. Free to preach
your convictions, unfettered, you will have a power over people that
will be tremendous. You have a very strong personality.”
She set his heart, his mind, to leaping by this unexpected confirmation
on her part of his hopes, and yet the man in him was intent upon the
woman. She had now the air of detached judgment, while he could not
refrain from speculating anxiously on the effect of his future course on
her and on their intimate relationship. He forbore from thinking, now,
of the looming events which might thrust them apart,--put a physical
distance between them,--his anxiety was concerned with the possible
snapping of the thread of sympathy which had bound them. In this
respect, he dreaded her own future as much as his own. What might she
do? For he felt, in her, a potential element of desperation; a capacity
to commit, at any moment, an irretrievable act.
“Once you have made your ideas your own,” she mused, “you will have the
power of convincing people.”
“And yet--”
“And yet”--she seized his unfinished sentence, “you are not at all
positive of convincing me. I'll give you the credit of forbearing to
make proselytes.” She smiled at him.
Thus she read him again.
“If you call making proselytes a desire to communicate a view of life
which gives satisfaction--” he began, in his serious way.
“Oh, I want to be convinced!” she exclaimed, penitently, “I'd give
anything to feel as you feel. There's something lacking in me, there
must be, and I have only seen the disillusionizing side. You infer that
the issue of the Creeds will crumble,--preach the new, and the old will
fall away of itself. But what is the new? How, practically, do you deal
with the Creeds? We have got off that subject.”
“You wish to know?” he asked.
“Yes--I wish to know.”
“The test of any doctrine is whether it can be translated into life,
whether it will make any difference to the individual who accepts it.
The doctrines expressed in the Creeds must stand or fall by the test.
Consider, for instance, the fundamental doctrine in the Creeds, that of
the Trinity, which has been much scoffed at. A belief in God, you will
admit, has an influence on conduct, and the Trinity defines the three
chief aspects of the God in whom Christians believe. Of what use to
quarrel with the word Person if God be conscious? And the character
of God has an influence on conduct. The ancients deemed him wrathful,
jealous, arbitrary, and hence flung themselves before him and
propitiated him. If the conscious God of the universe be good, he
is spoken of as a Father. He is as once, in this belief, Father and
Creator. And inasmuch as it is known that the divine qualities enter
into man, and that one Man, Jesus, whose composite portrait--it is
agreed--could not have been factitiously invented, was filled with them,
we speak of God in man as the Son. And the Spirit of God that enters
into the soul of man, transforming, inspiring, and driving him, is the
Third Person, so-called. There is no difficulty so far, granted the
initial belief in a beneficent God.
“If we agree that life has a meaning, and, in order to conform to the
purpose of the Spirit of the Universe, must be lived in one way, we
certainly cannot object to calling that right way of living, that decree
of the Spirit, the Word.
“The Incarnate Word, therefore, is the concrete example of a human being
completely filled with the Spirit, who lives a perfect life according to
its decree. Ancient Greek philosophy called this decree, this meaning of
life, the Logos, and the Nicene Creed is a confession of faith in that
philosophy. Although this creed is said to have been, scandalously
forced through the council of Nicaea by an emperor who had murdered his
wife and children, and who himself was unbaptized, against a majority
of bishops who would, if they had dared Constantine's displeasure, have
given the conscience freer play, to-day the difficulty has, practically
disappeared. The creed is there in the prayer book, and so long as it
remains we are at liberty to interpret the ancient philosophy in which
it is written--and which in any event could not have been greatly
improved upon at that time--in our own modern way, as I am trying to
explain it to you.
“Christ was identified with the Logos, or Word, which must have had a
meaning for all time, before and after its complete revelation.
And this is what the Nicene Creed is trying to express when it says,
'Begotten of his Father before all worlds.' In other words, the purpose
which Christ revealed always existed. The awkward expression of
the ancients, declaring that he 'came down' for our salvation
(enlightenment) contains a fact we may prove by experience, if we accept
the meaning he put upon existence, and adopt this meaning as our scheme
of life. But we: must first be quite clear, as: to this meaning. We
may and do express all this differently, but it has a direct bearing
on life. It is the doctrine of the Incarnation. We begins to perceive
through it that our own incarnations mean something, and that our task
is to discover what they do mean--what part in the world purpose we are
designed to play here.
“Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary is an emphasis on the
fact that man born of woman may be divine. But the ignorant masses of
the people of the Roman Empire were undoubtedly incapable of grasping a
theory of the Incarnation put forward in the terms of Greek philosophy;
while it was easy for them, with their readiness to believe in nature
miracles, to accept the explanation of Christ's unique divinity as due
to actual, physical generation by the Spirit. And the wide belief in the
Empire in gods born in this way aided such a conception. Many thousands
were converted to Christianity when a place was found in that religion
for a feminine goddess, and these abandoned the worship of Isis,
Demeter, and Diana for that of the Virgin Mary. Thus began an evolution
which is still going on, and we see now that it was impossible that the
world should understand at once the spiritual meaning of life as
Christ taught it--that material facts merely symbolize the divine.
For instance, the Gospel of John has been called the philosophical or
spiritual gospel. And in spite of the fact that it has been assailed
and historically discredited by modern critics, for me it serves to
illuminate certain truths of Christ's message and teaching that the
other Gospels do not. Mark, the earliest Gospel, does not refer to the
miraculous birth. At the commencements of Matthew and Luke you will read
of it, and it is to be noted that the rest of these narratives curiously
and naively contradict it. Now why do we find the miraculous birth in
these Gospels if it had not been inserted in order to prove, in a
manner acceptable to simple and unlettered minds, the Theory of the
Incarnation, Christ's preexistence? I do not say the insertion was
deliberate. And it is difficult for us moderns to realize the polemic
spirit in which the Gospels were written. They were clearly not written
as history. The concern of the authors, I think, was to convert their
readers to Christ.
“When we turn to John, what do we find? In the opening verses of this
Gospel the Incarnation is explained, not by a virgin birth, but in a
manner acceptable to the educated and spiritually-minded, in terms of
the philosophy of the day. And yet how simply! 'In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' I prefer John's
explanation.
“It is historically true that, in the earlier days when the Apostles'
Creed was put forth, the phrase 'born of they Virgin Mary' was inserted
for the distinct purpose of laying stress on the humanity of Christ, and
to controvert the assertion of the Gnostic sect that he was not born at
all, but appeared in the world in some miraculous way.
“Thus to-day, by the aid of historical research, we are enabled to
regard the Creeds in the light of their usefulness to life. The myth of
the virgin birth probably arose through the zeal of some of the writers
of the Gospels to prove that the prophecy of Isaiah predicted the advent
of the Jewish Messiah who should be born of a virgin. Modern scholars
are agreed that the word Olmah which Isaiah uses does not mean virgin,
but young woman. There is quite a different Hebrew word for 'virgin.'
The Jews, at the time the Gospels were written, and before, had
forgotten their ancient Hebrew. Knowing this mistake, and how it arose,
we may repeat the word Virgin Mary in the sense used by many early
Christians, as designating the young woman who was the mother of Christ.
“I might mention one or two other phrases, archaic and obscure. 'The
Resurrection of the Body' may refer to the phenomenon of Christ's
reappearance after death, for which modern psychology may or may not
account. A little reflection, however, convinces one that the phenomenon
did take place in some manner, or else, I think, we should never have
heard of Christ. You will remember that the Apostles fled after his
death on the cross, believing what he had told them was all only a
dream. They were human, literal and cowardly, and they still needed some
kind of inner, energizing conviction that the individuality persisted
after death, that the solution of human life was victory over it, in
order to gain the courage to go out and preach the Gospel and face death
themselves. And it was Paul who was chiefly instrumental in freeing the
message from the narrow bounds of Palestine and sending it ringing down
the ages to us. The miracle doesn't lie in what Paul saw, but in the
whole man transformed, made incandescent, journeying tirelessly to
the end of his days up and down the length and breadth of the empire,
labouring, as he says, more abundantly than they all. It is idle to say
that the thing which can transform a man's entire nature and life is not
a reality.”
She had listened, motionless, as under the spell of his words.
Self-justification, as he proceeded, might easily have fused itself into
a desire to convince her of the truth of his beliefs. But he was not
deceived, he knew her well enough to understand, to feel the indomitable
spirit of resistance in her. Swayed she could be, but she would mot
easily surrender.
“There is another phrase,” she said after a moment, “which I have never
heard explained, 'descended into hell.'”
“It was merely a matter of controverting those who declared Christ was
taken from the cross before he died. In the childish science of the
time, to say that one descended into hell was to affirm that he was
actually dead, since the souls of the departed were supposed to go at
once to hell. Hell and heaven were definite places. To say that Christ
ascended to heaven and sat on the right hand of the Father is to declare
one's faith that his responsible work in the spiritual realm continues.”
“And the Atonement? doesn't that imply a sacrifice of propitiation?”
“Atonement may be pronounced At-one-ment,” Hodder replied. “The old
idea, illustrated by a reference to the sacrifice of the ancients, fails
to convey the truth to modern minds. And moreover, as I have inferred,
these matters had to be conveyed in symbols until mankind were prepared
to grasp the underlying spiritual truths which Christ sought to convey.
Orthodox Christianity has been so profoundly affected by the ancient
Jewish religion that the conception of God as wrathful and jealous--a
God wholly outside--has persisted to our times. The Atonement means
union with the Spirit of the Universe through vicarious suffering, and
experience teaches us that our own sufferings are of no account unless
they be for a cause, for the furtherance of the design of the beneficent
Spirit which is continually at work. Christ may be said to have died for
humanity because he had to suffer death itself in order to reveal
the complete meaning of life. You once spoke to me about the sense of
sin--of being unable to feel it.”
She glanced at him quickly, but did not speak.
“There is a theory concerning this,” he continued, “which has
undoubtedly helped many people, and which may be found in the writings
of certain modern psychologists. It is that we have a conscious, or
lower, human self, and a subconscious, or better self. This subconscious
self stretches down, as it were, into the depths of the universe and
taps the source of spiritual power. And it is through the subconscious
self that every man is potentially divine. Potentially, because the
conscious self has to reach out by an effort of the will to effect this
union with the spiritual in the subconscious, and when it is effected,
it comes from the response of the subconscious. Apparently from without,
as a gift, and therefore, in theological language, it is called grace.
This is what is meant by being born again, the incarnation of the Spirit
in the conscious, or human. The two selves are no longer divided, and
the higher self assumes control,--takes the reins, so to speak.
“It is interesting, as a theory. And the fact that it has been seriously
combated by writers who deny such a function of the subconscious does
not at all affect the reality of the experience.
“Once we have had a vision of the true meaning of life a vision which
stirs the energies of our being, what is called 'a sense of sin'
inevitably follows. It is the discontent, the regret, in the light of a
higher knowledge, for the lost opportunities, for a past life which
has been uncontrolled by any unifying purpose, misspent in futile
undertakings, wasted, perhaps, in follies and selfish caprices which
have not only harmed ourselves but others. Although we struggle, yet
by habit, by self-indulgence, by lack of a sustained purpose, we have
formed a character from which escape seems hopeless. And we realize
that in order to change ourselves, an actual regeneration of the will is
necessary. For awhile, perchance, we despair of this. The effort to get
out of the rut we have made for ourselves seems of no avail. And it
is not, indeed, until we arrive, gradually or otherwise, and through a
proper interpretation of the life of Christ, at the conviction that we
may even never become useful in the divine scheme that we have a sense
of what is called 'the forgiveness of sins.' This conviction, this
grace, this faith to embark on the experiment accomplishes of itself
the revival of the will, the rebirth which we had thought impossible. We
discover our task, high or humble,--our cause. We grow marvellously at
one with God's purpose, and we feel that our will is acting in the same
direction as his. And through our own atonement we see the meaning of
that other Atonement which led Christ to the Cross. We see that our
conviction, our grace, has come through him, and how he died for our
sins.”
“It's quite wonderful how logical and simple you make it, how thoroughly
you have gone into it. You have solved it for yourself--and you will
solve it for others many others.”
She rose, and he, too, got to his feet with a medley of feelings. The
path along which they walked was already littered with green acorns.
A gray squirrel darted ahead of them, gained a walnut and paused,
quivering, halfway up the trunk, to gaze back at them. And the glance
she presently gave him seemed to partake of the shyness of the wild
thing.
“Thank you for explaining it to me,” she said.
“I hope you don't think--” he began.
“Oh, it isn't that!” she cried, with unmistakable reproach. “I
asked you--I made you tell me. It hasn't seemed at all like--the
confessional,” she added, and smiled and blushed at the word. “You have
put it so nicely, so naturally, and you have given me so much to think
about. But it all depends--doesn't it?--upon whether one can feel the
underlying truth of which you spoke in the first place; it rests upon
a sense of the prevailing goodness of things. It seems to me cruel that
what is called salvation, the solution of the problem of life, should
depend upon an accidental discovery. We are all turned loose with our
animal passions and instincts, of self-preservation, by an indifferent
Creator, in a wilderness, and left to find our way out as best we can.
You answer that Christ showed us the way. There are elements in his
teaching I cannot accept--perhaps because I have been given a wrong
interpretation of them. I shall ask you more questions some day.
“But even then,” she continued, “granted that Christ brought the
complete solution, as you say, why should so many millions have lived
and died, before and after his coming, who had suffered so, and who had
never heard of him? That is the way my reason works, and I can't help
it. I would help it if I could.”
“Isn't it enough,” he asked, “to know that a force is at work combating
evil,--even if you are not yet convinced that it is a prevailing force?
Can you not trust that it will be a prevailing force, if your sympathies
are with it, without demanding a revelation of the entire scheme of the
universe? Of what use is it to doubt the eternal justice?”
“Oh, use!” she cried, “I grant you its uselessness. Doubt seems an
ingrained quality. I can't help being a fatalist.”
“And yet you have taken your life in your own hands,” he reminded her,
gently.
“Only to be convinced of its futility,” she replied.
Again, momentarily thrust back into himself, he wondered jealously once
more what the disillusionments had been of that experience from before
which she seemed, at times, ready to draw back a little the veil.
“A sense of futility is a sense of incompleteness,” he said, “and
generally precedes a sense of power.”
“Ah, you have gained that! Yet it must always have been latent in
you--you make one feel it. But now!” she exclaimed, as though the
discovery had just dawned on her, “now you will need power, now you will
have to fight as you have never fought in your life.”
He found her enthusiasm as difficult to withstand as her stoicism.
“Yes, I shall have to fight,” he admitted. Her partisanship was sweet.
“When you tell them what you have told me,” she continued, as though
working it out in her own mind, “they will never submit to it, if they
can help it. My father will never submit to it. They will try to put you
out, as a heretic,--won't they?”
“I have an idea that they will,” he conceded, with a smile.
“And won't they succeed? Haven't they the power?”
“It depends,--in the first place, on whether the bishop thinks me a
heretic.”
“Have you asked him?”
“No.”
“But can't they make you resign?”
“They can deprive me of my salary.”
She did not press this.
“You mustn't think me a martyr,” he pleaded, in a lighter tone.
She paid no heed to this protest, but continued to regard him with a
face lighted by enthusiasm.
“Oh, that's splendid of you!” she cried. “You are going to speak
the truth as you see it, and let them do their worst. Of course,
fundamentally, it isn't merely because they're orthodox that they won't
like it, although they'll say so, and perhaps think so. It will be
because if you have really found the truth--they will instinctively,
fear its release. For it has a social bearing, too--hasn't it?--although
you haven't explained that part of it.”
“It has a distinct social bearing,” he replied, amazed at the way her
mind flew forward and grasped the entire issue, in spite of the fact
that her honesty still refused to concede his premises. Such were the
contradictions in her that he loved. And, though she did not suspect it,
she had in her the Crusader's spirit. “I have always remembered what
you once said, that many who believed themselves Christians had an
instinctive feeling that there is a spark in Christianity which, if
allowed to fly, would start a conflagration beyond their control.
And that they had covered the spark with ashes. I, too,” he added
whimsically, “was buried under the ashes.”
“And the spark,” she demanded, “is not Socialism--their nightmare?”
“The spark is Christianity itself--but I am afraid they will not be able
to distinguish it from Socialism. The central paradox in Christianity
consists in the harmonizing of the individual and socialistic spirit,
and this removes it as far from the present political doctrine of
socialism as it is possible to be. Christianity, looked at from a
certain viewpoint,--and I think the proper viewpoint,--is the most
individualistic of religions, since its basic principle is the
development of the individual into an autonomous being.”
They stood facing each other on an open stretch of lawn. The place was
deserted. Through the trees, in the near distance, the sightless front
of the Ferguson mansion blazed under the September sun.
“Individualistic!” she repeated, as though dazed by the word applied to
the religion she had discarded. “I can't understand. Do you think I ever
can understand?” she asked him, simply.
“It seems to me you understand more than you are willing to give
yourself credit for,” he answered seriously. “You don't take into
account your attitude.”
“I see what you mean--a willingness to take the right road, if I can
find it. I am not at all sure that I want to take it. But you must tell
me more--more of what you have discovered. Will you?”
He just hesitated. She herself appeared to acknowledge no bar to their
further intimacy--why should he?
“I will tell you all I know,” he said.
Suddenly, as if by a transference of thought, she voiced what he had in
mind.
“You are going to tell them the truth about themselves!” she exclaimed.
“--That they are not Christians!”
His silence was an admission.
“You must see,” he told her, after the moment they had looked into each
other's faces, “that this is the main reason why I must stay at St.
John's, in the Church, if I conscientiously can.”
“I see. The easier course would be to resign, to have scruples. And you
believe there is a future for the Church.”
“I believe it,” he assented.
She still held his eyes.
“Yes, it is worth doing. If you see it that way it is more worth
doing than anything else. Please don't think,” she said, “that I don't
appreciate why you have told me all this, why you have given me your
reasons. I know it hasn't been easy. It's because you wish me to have
faith in you for my own sake, not for yours. And I am grateful.”
“And if that faith is justified, as you will help to justify it, that it
may be transferred to a larger sphere,” he answered.
She gave him her hand, but did not reply.